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Scientists against God

Published 6 December 2006

From
Denis Alexander

Many ironies are well highlighted in your coverage of the atheists’ jamboree in La Jolla (18 November, p 8). I would like to add two more.

The first is that the scientific enterprise in the form we know it today, with journals, scientific societies, empiricism and specialised techniques, was started largely by people of deep religious faith in the 16th and 17th centuries. In the writings of Newton and Descartes, the very notion of scientific law was derived from the Christian idea of God’s laws. Atheists might wish to reflect a bit more on the fact that their scientific …